Ellen Pao trial: Is Kleiner’s problem discrimination or perception?

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Ellen Pao, right, leaves the courthouse with her attorney Therese Lawless in San Francisco Calif., on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015.PAO, the interim CEO of Reddit, has filed a $16 million gender discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. According to Pao, she was pressured into a sexual relationship with a Kleiner colleague. (John Green/Bay Area News Group)

In the Pao v. Kleiner Perkins trial in San Francisco on Friday, the venture firm’s culture was painted as a tough, male-dominated place where people interrupted each other.

It’s a kind of office where bragging, at least for some, never hurts. Male junior partners over-forecasted the expected revenue of their companies compared to women, according to one female junior partner.

Under questioning, Stephen Hirschfeld, the investigator paid by Kleiner, described interviews with female junior partners who talked about male-only dinners and trips, as well as meetings where women didn’t sit at the main table, as reported by Heather Somerville, who is live-blogging the trial.

These things, such as female partners being asked to take a meetings notes, as we reported on Silicon Beat yesterday, may seem like awkward moments or oversights that don’t translate to gender discrimination.

But partner after partner told Hirschfeld that the path to getting ahead at Kleiner was opaque.

Mentoring relationships are critical to someone’s success at the firm, junior partners told Hirschfeld. A male junior partner who Ray Lane, a senior partner, took under his wing, was known as “Little Ray” by some, one woman told him.

The company doesn’t have a discrimination problem, one female junior partner told Hirschfeld, but an “optics problem.” To the outside world, some perceived slights may look bad.

Another junior partner described how “it was hard for women to get a word in edgewise” because of men’s voices, Hirschfeld said under questioning by Pao’s lawyer Therese Lawless.Now, Lynne Hermle, Kleiner’s attorney, is cross examining Hirschfeld this afternoon. Pao may be on the stand later.

Michelle Quinn is a former business columnist for the Bay Area News Group. Prior to that, she was the Silicon Valley correspondent at Politico covering tech policy and politics. She has also covered the tech industry at the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. She was a blogger for the New York Times.